Action to mitigate climate change is a key component of the Scottish Government’s aim to create a growing, sustainable and inclusive economy. The Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 set world-leading greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, including a target to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050.
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1 Comment
Ian Miller · July 21, 2017 at 5:47 pm
Meeting Utopian levels of decarbonisation demanded by the year 2050, which requires electrification of all transport, and heating, on top of currently produced intermittent renewable power which keeps the lights on, – part time, will impose such a penalty and at such an exorbitant cost to the end user as to render the UK already projected to have some of the highest energy prices in the world, unable to do much more than simply bankrupt itself: So much effort and resources being expended for no gain whatsoever most of the time.
If wind turbines provide power 30% of the time just to keep the lights on, to provide battery power for the remaining 70% assuming 100% energy transfer efficiency, we would require not just the 7,500 turbines currently operational, but a further 15,000 of them ! To further add transport and heat which requires far more generating capacity by a factor of at least ’10’ would require a total commissioning of 225,000 turbines. But we have neither the 100% efficiency in energy transfer, nor the battery technologies to power the country on such a scale. So assuming an optimistic 50% efficiency in energy transfer would further double the estimate of 225,000 turbines required, – to 450,000 turbines together with their associated transmission pylons . What on earth would Scotland look like and who would want to pay the taxes and energy bills living here would require ? Who would want to live here in such a glorified industrial estate hosting nearly half a million turbines which having only a 25 year life-span will ALL require.. total replacement before the 2050 deadline?
In any case, by 2025 the tourist industry would have tanked, and with ageing turbines everywhere we would have nothing to show in the end for our utterly futile self-righteous attempts to ‘save the planet’.
Furthermore, it is painful to have to point out that to run any local and a centralised Grid, in conjunction with subsidised unreliable renewables and subsidised fossil-fuelled power stations where the unreliable power source is always favoured, before (unlikely) storage technology is established, is unquestionably economic madness.
Put differently, “How much CO2 is produced and at what cost, – to manufacture the whole gamut of Wind Turbines which increasingly blights our landscape” for so low an output, compared with the cost of a Shale Gas Policy which would reliably produce all our energy 24/7 at economic market rates – until Nuclear Fusion eventually sensibly provides the solution.
Like Germany, which is haemorrhaging its heavy industries to America, its Intermittent Wind Powered Renewable policy now requires increasing Coal Fired back-up power stations and rather than reducing CO2 emissions is increasing them, while America’s Fossil Fuelled Shale bonanza policy is reducing its, while it works on Nuclear Fusion. In other words Germany is contributing to so-called Global Warming while America ,having pulled out of the much vaunted Paris Agreement, does the opposite.
Are we like the lemmings, really proposing to go the German route ?